New Delhi: The Right To Food Campaign (RTF) organized a protest at Krishi Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday against the government’s refusal to take any action against hunger deaths that have occurred in the country. The death toll of these hunger deaths has reportedly reached 65.
 
Of the 56 hunger deaths compiled by the team from 2015 to 2018, 42 deaths have been reported between 2017 and 18. Most of these victims are from the disadvantaged groups such as Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims and a majority of these deaths are from two states – Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
 
These deaths are never called starvation deaths. Many people and even the Government refuse to believe in starvation deaths. Nevertheless, the fact remains that 19 crore people sleep on a hungry stomach in India, which explains why India ranks 100th out of the 119 countries in the global hunger Index.
 
Across India, over 50 people have died due to starvation-related deaths in the past four years, mostly after their ration cards were cancelled when they were not linked with Aadhar, as per the data released by two Right to Food Activists.
 
In 2017, The Jharkhand government patted their backs with a full-page ad for saving Rs. 225 crores and 86 crores by cancelling ‘Fake’ Aadhaar cards and old age pensions. They ended up depriving the poorest of poor of necessary food which has since resulted in many starvation deaths in the state. Access to the Public Distribution System is abysmal and Aadhaar based biometric machines constantly fail, often leading to poor Indians dying of hunger.
 
RTF has released many fact-finding reports with annexures which delve into the complexities of the failure of the state government in providing the right to life to its residents. It details shocking negligence and corruption to deny basic human rights to the most marginalised.
 
Documentation by RTF reveals more:
 
Starvation deaths in the country
 
West Bengal
In mid – November, media reported the death of seven people from starvation. All of them belonged to the Sabar community, in Jungle Mahal area of Jhargram district of West Bengal. Sabar community is an ethnic tribe, mainly found in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. Right to Food and Work Campaign team from West Bengal visited the villages for fact-finding. Click here to read the fact-finding report and annexure.

Days after the news appeared in the media, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee refuted the reports as fabricated saying the deaths either resulted from age-related ailments or excessive liquor consumption. She said that the Government was providing food grains to every poor person.
 
Jharkhand
At least 17 people died of starvation in Jharkhand since 28 September 2017. The most recent victim is a 45-year-old Kaleshwar Soren who died of hunger and destitution on November 11 in Mahuatant village of Jama block of Dumka district of Jharkhand. A fact-finding team of the Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand, found that Kaleshwar’s family’s ration card was cancelled as it was not linked with Aadhaar.
 
Kaleshwar’s death comes close on the heels of the deaths of Moti Yadav of Margomunda block (Deoghar) on 1 November and Seeta Devi of Basia block (Gumla) on 25 October. Moti Yadav, visually impaired, died of destitution. He did not get disability pension despite applying for it. 75-year-old Seeta Devi, who lived alone, starved to death as she did not have any food or cash at home before her death. Even though she had a ration card, due to illness, she could not go to the ration shop in October to authenticate her identity. She was also denied old age pension as her bank account was not linked with Aadhaar.
 
Out of these 17 hunger deaths, at least seven victims were eligible for social security pension but were either not issued a pension or did not receive their pension due to administrative lapses or Aadhaar-related issues. Not to mention the children of these families, with poor education, negligible access to health services and employment, are staring at a bleak future. Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand has issued a statement about this.
 
The deceased in Jharkhand did not get the ration promised under the public distribution scheme (PDS) and Antodyay Anna Yojana (AAY).
 
All these deaths took place after the Jharkhand government cancelled 11.6 lakh ration cards claiming that these were bogus as they were not linked to Aadhaar by their holders. The information of these cancellations was provided by the state secretary of food and civic supply Vinay Chaubey.
 
Statement on Aadhaar can be found here [English version] [Hindi version].

Media Coverage of the statement: The Wire [Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar], Counterview, Times of India, News Click, EPW, The Wire [Abinash]
  
Discussion on Manifesto for 2019 elections
 
Madhya Pradesh: Right to Food Campaign prepared a manifesto and is submitting to all the political parties, which is focused on Maternity Entitlement, ICDS, nutrition, diversity in the nutrition, Public Distribution System, provision of proteins and fats in the National Food Security Act, community-based management policy of nutrition and Social Audit. Indian National Congress Manifesto (MP) says they will provide 90 days wages or Rs. 21000, whichever is less, as maternity entitlements to all unorganized sector families.
 
Bihar: On the Constitution Day (November 26) Right to Food Campaign (Bihar) jointly with other organizations set up a one-day discussion on the manifesto for 2019 elections. Their demand includes demands for Right to Food, Pension, Right to Education, Justice for all, and preventing communalism. They have also demanded actions to save the environment, prevent distress migration of people, land reforms, employment guarantee, homeless etc. in the manifesto along with Government accountability on each of these issues.. Full manifesto can be found here.
 
Statement on Aadhaar
Hundreds of members of various campaigns said they were “extremely disappointed” with the Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, “which allows the state to make the use of Aadhaar and biometric authentication mandatory for citizens to receive social benefits.”
 
A joint statement issued by various groups said “the mandatory use of Aadhaar may amount to an emergency. That is why we call upon people to come together to pressurize all parties to amend the Aadhaar Act immediately so that the mandatory use of Aadhaar for accessing basic entitlements is completely prohibited.” They also said they would make Aadhaar an “electoral issue.” Click here to read the full statement.
 
Media coverage on Aadhaar statement
The Hindu, Business Standard, News Click, Outlook India, Daily Hunt, AajkiKhabar, Social News,  Web India, 
 
Letter for Politicians
Right to Food Campaign Secretariat sent a letter to all politicians on the issue of hunger to request to raise their voice in the Parliament on behalf of those who are hungry and malnourished. There is a silent emergency in the country with about 45 reported hunger-related deaths in the past one year from different states. These deaths are a reflection of the grave situation of hunger and distress in many parts of the country and we must act urgently to ensure that not a single person succumbs to hunger anymore.  
 
“More children under the age of five die in India than anywhere else in the world. A recent estimate puts this figure at over 1.5 million children a year—over 4,500 child deaths a day. A third of these could have been averted if children did not go to bed hungry night after night. These figures suggest that over 3,00,000 children die every year in India because of hunger. And for many children who escape death, the poverty of their parents means that hunger remains an unremitting part of their lives. Hunger does not stunt only the body, it also affects the brain. The result: An entire generation of children born into poverty with stunted intellectual development which traps them in the same poverty their parents lived with. A state of poverty which will ultimately kill them well before their fellow citizens who did not go hungry during childhood.” wrote Vikram Patel, a Pershing Square Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School and affiliated with the Public Health Foundation of India and Sangath.
 
IndiaSpend spoke to medical experts and social activists and found that the government response does not take into account two factors involving the links between malnutrition and starvation:
 
1.Medically, these deaths are most likely due to infections and diseases. But prolonged malnutrition undermines the immune system, making the body prone to life-threatening infections;
 
2.Starvation deaths are caused by a circle of poverty, government apathy and mandatory Aadhaar-ration-card integration, the lack of which deprives poor citizens of foodgrain they are entitled to under government schemes. Over a period of time, this results in malnutrition and death.
 
(With inputs from past Sabrang articles on starvation deaths)
 
Read Also:
In A UP District, Death From Hunger, As Governance, Social Security Collapse
Did Aadhaar Glitches Cause Half Of 14 Recent Jharkhand Starvation Deaths?
Sordid tale of starvation: How govt negligence caused deaths by hunger in Jharkhand
Indian Children Suffer from Infant Starvation and hunger
 

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The same cannot be said of the government when it comes to taking care of the poorest, most vulnerable and the most marginalised.

Across India, over 50 people have died due to starvation-related deaths in the past four years, mostly after their ration cards were cancelled when they were not linked with Aadhar, as per the data released by two Right to Food Activists.

In India, there are approximately 30,000 deaths reported due to malnourishment every year. As per a recent report published by UNICEF, malnutrition is a direct contributor to nearly half of all deaths of children under five years. Malnourishment is just another name for starvation because these children do not get enough food and are too weak.

These deaths are never called starvation deaths. Many people and even the Government refuse to believe in starvation deaths. Nevertheless, the fact remains that 19 crore people sleep on a hungry stomach in India, which explains why India ranks 100th out of the 119 countries in the global hunger Index.

In July 2018, three little girls – sisters ages 2, 4, and 8 died of hunger in India’s capital Delhi. This tragedy should have stirred the government to take concrete steps to provide food security to the poorest of the poor but unfortunately, the politicians were all busy blaming the other parties. Each time a person or a child dies of hunger the government refuses to accept it as hunger death till the post-mortem report reveals that there were no traces of any food in the stomach from a long time. Otherwise, they are passed off as malnutrition deaths.

Two activists, Siraj Datta and Reetika Khera from Bihar and Delhi respectively compiled a list of hunger deaths related to Aadhar both directly and indirectly across India to remember the first death anniversary of  ‘hunger death’ of 11-year-old Santoshi in 2017.

On September 28th 2017, Santoshi Kumari of Jharkhand died due to hunger as there was no food at home. The girl slipped into unconsciousness due to extreme hunger and died in a state of unconsciousness. The truth came to light later that the family had lost their ration card because it was not linked to Aadhar. It is reported that the Government of Jharkhand ‘mass cancelled’ Aadhar-less ration cards. And Santoshi’s family’s ration card was one among those.
 

 

“There are thousands of hunger deaths in India and these are only a handful which we compiled that are related to the exclusion caused due to the compulsory linking of Aadhar card to ration card,” Said Siraj Datta, who is associated with the Right to Food Campaign. “The idea behind this study was to bring out the exclusion caused due to non-linkage to the Aadhar card and to initiate political debates about these deaths. It is sad that these deaths are not being registered.”

Of the 56 hunger deaths compiled by the team from 2015 to 2018, 42 deaths have been reported between 2017 and 18. Most of these victims are from the disadvantaged groups such as Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims and a majority of these deaths are from two states – Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

Common reasons include losing one’s ration card or pension for lack of Aadhaar linking, and failure of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (ABBA), which is compulsory – for practical purposes – in several states.

Another recent death of two siblings belonging to Dalit community, Govinda, aged 5 years and his sister Munni, 2 years on August 31, 2018, and September 1 occurred in Bihar as they could not get their Aadhar card and as a result, they were denied rations from the last 8 months. With the father in jail due to some protest he was involved in, the mother could not find any work under MNREGA.

More recent is the tragic death of 8-year-old Khushi from Hathras in UP. The family had no ration card and used to buy food grains. But when her father became jobless and could not find a job for two months, the family began to eat less and lesser ill they were finally reduced to go hungry. After a week of remaining hungry, Khushi and her sister fell unconscious. Khushi died on the way to hospital while her sister is being treated.

All this in a state where retailers have been accused of siphoning off over 2.2 lakh tonnes of food grains under the 30 crore PDS scam in which Aadhar numbers of genuine beneficiaries of subsidised rations have been replaced with fake ones.

In case of Santoshi, her mother and sister moved to the Supreme Court to highlight the condition of the Dalit families in Jharkhand who have been denied food grains due to non-linkage of Aadhar and ration cards. Even though they sought criminal action against the officials due to whose negligence starvation death/s have occurred, the SC merely issued a formal notice to the Government. And the Government denied these allegations stating the deaths were due to “illness”.

The Supreme Court in its latest verdict in September 2018 upheld the constitutional validity of the Aadhar card and although linking Aadhar card to avail certain benefits have been waived; linking Aadhar to avail welfare schemes is mandatory leaving the people with no choice but to comply.

Requests to push for alternative identity in case of non-linkage of Aadhar card with ration card have not been considered.

Courtesy: Tow Circles
 

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